---
title: 4.4 to 4.5
description: This guide covers upgrading a 4.4 Spree application to Spree 4.5
---

<Warning>
We recommend [upgrading straight to 4.8](4.x-to-4.8), as we improved how we handle translations in 4.8.
This also means easier database migration, especially if you have a big product catalog.
</Warning>

<Note>
If you're on an older version than 4.4 please follow previous upgrade guides and perform those upgrades incrementally, eg.

1. [upgrade 4.1 to 4.2](4.1-to-4.2)
2. [upgrade 4.2 to 4.3](4.2-to-4.3)
3. [upgrade 4.3 to 4.4](4.3-to-4.4)
</Note>

## Upgrade Rails

<Warning>
Rails 6.0 is no longer supported - if you haven’t already, you’ll need to upgrade to **Rails 6.1 or 7.x**. 
</Warning>

The effort to upgrade to Rails 6.1 is relatively low and brings a lot of improvements around ActiveStorage and handling of CDNs. See the Rails docs [for upgrading from 6.0 to 6.1](https://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/upgrading_ruby_on_rails.html#upgrading-from-rails-6-0-to-rails-6-1), and for [upgrading from 6.1 to 7.0](https://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/upgrading_ruby_on_rails.html#upgrading-from-rails-6-1-to-rails-7-0).

<Note>
If using Rails 7, you will need to [install libvips](https://www.libvips.org/install.html) on your cloud environment, as Rails 7 uses vips as its default variant processor. You can still use imagemagick, but you’ll need to manually set it in your [Rails config](https://edgeapi.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveStorage/Variant.html).
</Note>

### Rails 7 specific changes

#### Update Spree Config

If you're upgrading your app to Rails 7, you'll need to make a slight update to your spree config initializer. In `config/initializers/spree.rb`, wrap the `Spree.config` block in a `Rails.application.config.after_initialize` block, like so:

```ruby
Rails.application.config.after_initialize do
  Spree.config do |config|
    # config settings initialized here
  end
end
```

If you don't perform this update to the code, you may expect to get the following error:

```ruby
/lib/spree/core/preferences/store.rb:96:in `should_persist?': 
uninitialized constant Spree::Preference (NameError)
```

#### Update other initializers

Just like with `Spree::Config`, you may need to [update other intializers in your application, that use autoloadable constants](https://rubyonrails.org/2021/9/3/autoloading-in-rails-7-get-ready).

For example, if you use `spree_auth_devise`, you'll need to update `config/initializers/devise.rb` and wrap the configuration in `Rails.application.config.after_initialize` block:

```ruby
Rails.application.config.after_initialize do
  if defined?(Spree::Auth)
    Spree::Auth::Config.signout_after_password_change = false
  end
end
```

## Update gems

Run the following command to update your gems to 4.4:

```bash
bundle update
```

Legacy REST API v1 was extracted from the spree gem in 4.4. If your application depends on the Spree v1 API, you'll have to include it as a gem in your `Gemfile`:

```bash
bundle add spree_api_v1
```

## Install missing migrations

```bash
bin/rake railties:install:migrations
```

## Run migrations

```bash
bin/rails db:migrate
```

## Run Additional Commands for Frontend

If using [Spree Frontend](https://github.com/spree/spree_rails_frontend), run the following additional commands to get everything set up correctly with the updated gems:

```bash
bin/rails g spree:frontend:install
```

## Read the release notes

For information about changes contained within this release, please read the [Spree 4.5.0 Release Notes](https://github.com/spree/spree/releases/tag/v4.5.0).
